Processing of peppers (and many other crops) is typically labor intensive. When peppers are processed, processing is often done by hand, often after the peppers have been shipped to a place where the cost of labor is low. Likewise, pepper boat making is a labor intensive process to split the pepper and remove a portion of the seeds and veins of a de-stemmed pepper, typically made from a whole pepper pod. Boat making is typically done before the peppers are processed into food products, such as jalapeno appetizers.
A trend in the agriculture industry is a decrease in the availability of seasonal laborers. This decrease in the availability of labor can create challenges to a grower's ability to harvest and process peppers. In addition, processing may be outsourced to foreign countries where labor may be available at low cost, but adding transportation costs to the total cost of processing.